


the waves of the evening tide (you are drowning in memories you didn't know you had)

by chaWOOPa



Series: a family is not built in a day but sometimes they are lost in one [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Multi, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 11:23:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13902987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaWOOPa/pseuds/chaWOOPa
Summary: (Taako has never been alone in his life)Taako has always been aloneFighting for survival in a world thatDidn’t want a runt like him to wind upLiving a life worth more thanAnyone has ever believed(They will make it there together)





	the waves of the evening tide (you are drowning in memories you didn't know you had)

( _ Taako has never been alone in his life _ )

Taako has always been alone 

Fighting for survival in a world that

Didn’t want a runt like him to wind up

Living a life worth more than 

Anyone has ever believed

( _ They will make it there together _ )

 

  1. Taako says he is fine, good riddance and goodbye to a world that had never claimed to want him, but there is something in the way he throws himself into this one that makes Lup wonder if _Fine_ is the right word
  2. Taako throws himself into studying this world too, language and math and science and anything to stop thinking about the mongoose family he left behind.
  3. Taako _could_ fly the ship, but he doesn’t. He lets Lup and Lucretia fly while he watches the apocalypse for the third time in three years and wonders how they are supposed to save the multiverse if they can’t save a single world.
  4. Lucretia gives up on the light two weeks in and Taako resents her for it, because any world with magic this unlimited and this strange deserves more of a chance than she is willing to give it. This is the first of many victories.
  5. Taako has never known a consistent heartbeat, but his and Lup’s have been synced since before birth. He will never stop using them as a unit.
  6. He sees in the capitol everything he loves and everything he hates all wrapped up in one; he sees in the children they send to the slaughter everything he _is;_ he wants to raize it all to the ground but the hunger does that for him when their careful plan falls apart and he is left watching everything he worked for collapse around his ears until he reforms in glowing white light with the screams of children still ringing in his ears.
  7. He hadn’t known Lucretia until he had worked side by side on something that ended in heartbreak and he realizes now as they wander quiet forests and city ruins that he still doesn’t know her; but he finds he doesn’t need to know her to care about her.
  8. Taako watches Magnus go off for the light and no Magnus come back, he watches Merle start a church and dedicate himself to it without a second thought; he decides this plane will make it out alive no matter what they do.
  9. Taako says he is fine until he throws an ingredient and it splatters on the floor. He says he doesn’t want help in the kitchen, but he doesn’t make Lucretia leave when she quietly takes the place Lup usually occupies either.
  10. Taako laughs far too hard when Lucretia throws herself overboard for a pretty face ten minutes into the cycle and then collects 50 gold from lup for being less of a gay disaster than someone else on the crew.
  11. Taako marries a prince for the sake of marrying a prince and then tells everyone it was to get the light when they ask him why. What he really thinks, though, is if it even matters, really, when everything will reset in a year anyway?
  12. Taako gets more creative with his transmutation this cycle than he ever has before when there is no drinkable water on the plane, but even that isn’t quite enough to spare the whole crew. The only one who blames him is himself.
  13. There is something to be said about the way his crew keeps going even when things go horribly wrong. He watches Lucretia draw stylized renditions of this planet and he wonders not for the first time in life why anyone bothers trying if this is all the reward for it.
  14. Taako doesn’t remember much beyond another wizard’s spell hitting the ground and then reforming for the next year. He doesn’t make a joke about it being Lup’s turn to live on her own for a year no matter how much he wants to.
  15. It is funny, in hindsight, how they died this year. The reform laughing, and if it is a little hysterical, well, no one calls them on it.
  16. Taako likes to think his family is made of two people because the less people he cares about the less people who hurt him. He turns a handmade cookbook from Lucretia into a spellbook because if he doesn’t use it every day he will lose it. Taako has a bigger family than he wants to admit.
  17. Taako has one goal right now; keep the hunger from getting stronger. He promises Lup things won’t get that dark again, and he means it! He really does! The living crystal hums with life under his fingers as he watches their home get consumed by the hunger and he knows in his heart that if it came down to it... he would destroy a thousand worlds to keep his family safe. If this fact is darkness, than in darkness he will lurk.
  18. Taako watches Lucretia sketch and write until her fingers bleed and then some and decides to take up a hobby for himself. Writing isn’t his thing, he knows the math on this plane already, and the first time he picks up a paintbrush it feels too much like a makeup brush in his hands for him to concentrate on the painting. He finds an electric guitar somewhere on this plane, though, and it fits his hands perfectly.
  19. There are too many people on this plane, and they are kind, too. Taako steers clear of them as much as he can and finds himself learning how to close his heart off where it is. He knows it will kill him one day, this heart of his that is too big for his chest, but right now he needs to be alive.
  20. Taako notices Lucretia leave with a bottle of a chemical meant to stay in the lab and Taako doesn’t begrudge her when someone finds her, her face peaceful and a smile on her face. If he is careful to lock up the poisons on board the ship while she is gone and to figure out a spell to alert him when someone picks up specific knives than, well, she doesn’t have to know that he knows when she comes back.
  21. Taako loses himself to the waves and the sand and the sun and he lets himself spend a year just _not thinking_ for a while. It is so easy to slip into surfing, the physical of it just demanding enough to push him a little, the mental of it just enough to keep him out of his own head, the thrill enough to not get bored. He tries not to dwell on how much he will miss it after he is gone, but he hangs his board in his room on the ship and knows he will never stop looking for another opportunity to come back to the beach.
  22. Taako has always been the better judge of character, always. So when Lup refuses to listen to him about the natives on this plane feeling _sticky_ and she gets herself killed with the rest of their too trusting crew, Taako tells himself he will say it when she reforms this time. The “I told you so,” sounds more like an “I missed you” after Luce and he fly ship away from the gilded cities. 
  23. When Barry dies because Merle can’t reach Pan and Merle stops leaving his room, Taako and Lup start taking turns helping his garden in there. This isn’t the last time Merle is without magic because his god doesn’t exist on this plane, but it is the first, and it is the most painful.
  24. Taako likes the people in the next plane. They tolerate the crew, but that is it, and Taako appreciates that. Everyone lives, from day to day, and survival is the most important thing, and Taako gets that. _He gets that,_ and when they do survive after the crew leaves Taako realizes he cared far too much.
  25. Lup watches Taako close himself off and decides it is time to celebrate something good for one. She wants to call it the birthday rule, but Taako has never cared about birthdays so he calls it the Living rule. They make seven cakes (one for each crew member) and it is the first thing that doesn’t taste like dust in Taako’s mouth this year.
  26. Magnus is the one who tries to teach the twins hand-to-hand combat when the plane of magic is cut off, while Lucretia teaches Davenport and Barry. Taako usually ends up watching Magnus and Lup spar and by the end of the year is isn’t any closer to punching anything than he was when they started. Lup has three fighter levels.
  27. Taako doesn’t know it, but when he dies this year, Lup picks up a level or two more in fighter by training with Lucretia to soothe the grief she will never get used to.
  28. Barry is turned into a vampire, something Lucretia checks out of very fast but Taako is not nearly so squeamish about. After all, he is a scientist at heart, and change is where he excels. Barry and Lup join in on the experiments with all the fervor he expected. 
  29. Barry didn’t let up on the science long into the next year, and Taako knew it was because he could have spent his whole life learning about what it meant to be a vampire if only he didn’t have to hurt people to stay alive.
  30. Taako watches Merle blow away like dust on the wind and the thought hits him that is wrong. Merle isn’t supposed to be dust, Merle is supposed to be a constant in his life, and he is. Merle will be back. Taako looks up from where Merle’s shadow had blown away and looks at the people who taught Merle the skill that would kill him too many times and something in his head shifts. He looks in their eyes and instead of seeing people, Taako sees dust.
  31. Taako hates himself for not being able to interact with the people of the next plane, so he focus on Barry instead. He modifies the chair barry is confined to, makes it look better and function more smoothly. He spends time in the lab, helps Lucretia write, finds an acoustic guitar, does anything to keep himself from thinking about the people outside that he cannot see as people anymore.
  32. Taako spends eight months blind and half deaf, so he plucks the strings of his guitar and pretends he doesn’t rely more on the vibrations of each note than on the sound they make. By the end of it, he knows guitar better than he knows himself.
  33. Taako misses Merle more than he wants to see the Hunger stopped.
  34. Ten year olds are not meant to live on their own, but this world sends them out to find their own way anyway. Taako has night terrors more often than dreams for the first month they are here until a bird with cotton wings settles on his shoulder and hums him to sleep. He still hates this plane and its customs, but he never wants to leave.
  35. Taako blocks out the memories of life on the road as he transmutes inedible to edible and lup hunts for supplies and they fall back into a familiar dance they haven’t had to step too since they were little. This time they provide for seven instead of two, but they make it work.
  36. Taako and Lup get a good laugh and nice break when they watch their crew learn the hard way just how spoiled they are. The twins eat any garbage they can get their hands on, the crew gets picky but refuses to let Taako and Lup do anything about it. 
  37. Even as refreshed as last year left him, he watches Merle blow away and knows that they are leaving another plane to die and he feels a crack that was already in his chest widen. 
  38. Taako knows Lucretia is tired, so when she throws herself a little too eagerly into a battle far too much for her and doesn’t make it back out, Taako goes back home and tells no one that it was on purpose. After all, he can’t say he hasn’t done the same.
  39. Taako counts and recounts the supplies and transmutes until he can’t stretch things any further, and then he lets himself starve. It is only a week until he reforms, after all. Everyone else will make it and no one will go hungry but him, a win win in his mind. Lup would disagree, but she isn’t the one calling the shots this year, he is.
  40. Twin time isn’t a rarity, not now, but after his stunt last year Lup doesn’t let go for weeks and they end up doing their own mission on their own. It helps him heal a little from the disasters he has gone through to get here.
  41. Taako and Lup were on a supply run, then they were reforming on the deck of the starblaster. Neither of them knows what happened in between. Neither of them particularly care to.
  42. Taako gets tired of not talking to his best friend when he makes them lavender tea at two am, so they suss out a new language based on taps and morse code one night. No one manages to decode it but them.
  43. Taako doesn’t stop using the taptaptap of his fingers to tell Lucretia how he feels, and she doesn’t stop using the same to talk back. 
  44. Taako and Lup are an unstoppable force. Taako, Lup, and Barry are unstoppable force meets immovable object. Taako and Barry are immovable object. Taako alone isn’t something meant to be. Thankfully, Lucretia is still there even if Lup and Barry aren’t.
  45. Taako and Lup never had parents to forget, but when Magnus realizes he can’t remember his mother’s face, Taako feels a tug in his heart. Elves may have taken the memories of those who gave he and Lup life, but that doesn’t mean he never had them. He wonders vaguely as his head rests in Magnus’s lap and magnus runs gentle, calloused hands through his soft gold hair if his parents loved him.
  46. Taako didn’t sleep this year. Meditation was good enough.
  47. He thought about playing guitar, but in the end it was easier to pretend he didn’t care if he didn’t do something so personal.
  48. Taako would spend a lot of time painting nails and doing hair and relaxing with everyone on the starblaster, but in the end his favorite one would always be putting the night sky on Davenport’s fingernails. 
  49. Taako really hates math.
  50. When they celebrate birthdays this year, they make it a week long thing instead of just a day. Taako doesn’t feel particularly like celebrating 50 years on the run, but they drink plenty and they eat more, and Merle brings out some of his good weed, and by the time the week is out they are all in better spirits than they were before. 
  51. They come across many revolutions in their time, but this one is especially bloody. Taako chooses to stay with the ship while the others go to join in and look for the light and while not everyone understands why, no one blames him.
  52. Taako watches Lucretia struggle through two months before she disappears and he knows what happened. This time he talks to Davenport because it may not be his business, but she is his family.
  53. Taako doesn’t understand human aging, but when Lucretia realizes that she is three times as old as she was when they started their journey everyone wants to know their own age. Magnus is a year older than Luce, and Barry is five older than them. Merle and Davenport don’t play the age game with the humans, but Lup does, and when she tells everyone that she and Taako are about one-hundred and forty-something, the looks they get are more amused than Taako thought they would be. He and Lup weren’t adults when they got on the ship, not really.
  54. Taako’s death this year is unremarkable on his end, but when he reforms from it the way Barry clutches at him and the way Lucretia and Lup don’t meet his eyes completely for the first week of the next year makes him wonder just what happened immediately after.
  55. Lup and Taako get into a screaming match over whether or not everyone will make it through this hungry year. Taako insists they will, Lup insists they can’t. They don’t speak for a month and at the end of it Taako wishes they had because maybe then she wouldn’t have disappeared on him.
  56. Taako blames himself for not noticing that Magnus was dying as soon as they set foot on the surface of this plane. He spends most of his time with the rest of team human this year, and he holds just a little to tight when Magnus returns at the end of the year. 
  57. Sometimes, when Lup and Barry are busy and Taako needs someone to help him feel emotions, he will crawl into Lucretia’s space and sit quietly draped across her lap in the same fashion he usually did Lup. It helped the days when all he could think about was the death and destruction they trailed in their wake.
  58. Taako and Lup go out holding hands on twin pyres built for witches and if the people who had captured them hadn’t been smart enough to take their focuses, if they hadn’t learned everything they could from Davenport, if they hadn’t pretended to be friendly, if if if… taako and Lup don’t think about if’s for long before they let darkness take them only to reform what felt like seconds later on the deck of their silver home.
  59. Taako just hopes that he fades before Lup does.
  60. Lucretia realizes that Taako’s Dexterity is his second highest stat so she teaches him to fight the way she fights and while he started the year useless without magic, he is actually able to hold his own by the end of it.
  61. Taako bounces from bed to bed this year; He curls up around Merle until he blows away with the wind two weeks in so that someone else can live a little longer on their limited supply of food; He curls up around Magnus for another few days until he disappears without a trace and Taako suspects that he saw the food supply; He spends three months with Barry and Lup; He spends four curled around Davenport’s small, thin frame in Merle’s sheets as though it will somehow make his failure sting a little less; he spends the last four months curled up with Lucretia and Davenport both on the living room couch because someone has to make her sleep and no one wants to be alone.
  62. When Taako thinks back on year 62 he thinks about a sister. He thinks about the stars winking down on the deck of the deck of the starblaster as he drinks until he can’t think and then lying on the cool metal of the deck of the ship hand in hand with a woman he trusts more than himself and the soft slide of satin and silk as the two of them ruined his best two dresses with alcohol and laughter. When Taako thinks about cycle 62, he thinks about his little sister Lucretia, and he thinks about the bond he never thought would break.
  63. Taako is pretty sure that Magnus carrying Lucretia around it his way of proving to himself that she is still alive. It startles him when Magnus admits over two am hot chocolate near the end on the year that he is right. Lup has always been better at dealing with her own emotions, but Taako is better at knowing other’s, and the proof just now makes him realize just how deeply he cares about them. 
  64. Taako is best man at a wedding that happens years sooner than he thought it would, and he feels nothing but pride when Davenport walks his sister down the aisle after maid of honor Magnus and flower girl Lucretia. Merle declares them married in front of a small gathering of officials from the plane more interested in gauging the true level of Barry’s devotion than the ceremony, but they don’t put a damper on the celebration at all. 
  65. Taako’s last thought before he turns to stone is Lucretia’s face and a desperate prayer to whatever god is listening that she will be okay.
  66. Taako watches Lucretia’s eyes check her surroundings constantly, he watches her jump at the smallest sounds, watches her constant fight to remind herself that she is safe after so long being unsafe. He sleeps curled protectively around her for most of this year. She usually sleeps better with a heartbeat to ground herself.
  67. Taako takes a year to spend time with Barry and Lup when they land on the tail end of a disaster that ripped a hole between the plane of magic and the prime material plane. Lucretia and Davenport stay behind to do repairs on the ship with the materials given in exchange for their service to the organization working to stop the tear. Barry builds this “Inquisition” machines to close rifts and Taako and Lup make friends with the elf in charge. When they leave, Lucretia is more at peace, the elf is closer to their gods and ancestors than ever before, and Thedas is peaceful again. 
  68. Taako and Lup had a hard childhood, a hard life, really, and so when Lucretia doesn’t question why he slips into the habit of sleeping curled up in her bed alongside her, he is glad. If she doesn’t ask, he won’t tell. 
  69. Taako loses himself in the forest and the lakes and the peace of the world they landed on this year. Merle gives him a pan flute and a starters lesson and then Taako takes off to learn something new. He takes his guitar with him and a small bag of essential tools, and then he camps for a year with wildlife that has never met an elf before. When he comes home at the end of the year everything looks a little bit brighter, even if he still isn’t too good with his pan flute.
  70. Taako has the other book of transfer that Lucretia had crafted that year, and he knows in his heart that she isn’t dead, but he still resents the people who took her from him. At the end of the day, Taako has always been protective when it came to family.
  71. Taako won’t talk to Lucretia for a month except in coded taps and Lucretia gets it, really. She tells him in taps that she knows he was worried but she couldn’t let those people go out without a fight like her family on their home plane had. Taako forgives her after that.
  72. Taako doesn’t leave the ship without something covering his mouth to keep the dust out and he isn’t the only one. This isn’t the first time he thinks about the psychologists on their home world who had whispered about ptsd and the research he had done after, but it certainly isn’t the last either.
  73. Taako can’t stop thinking about the way elves in this world disappeared, and he wonders if he could follow them. He knows there is a war being fought over who should control the land, he knows that Lup and Barry are interested in the “old evil” that is causing it, he knows that the rest of the crew wants to help because it is _right_ , but Taako would rather wander the halls of the old elven kingdoms. Something about them calls to him. While his family paints battlefields with blood, he paints the ruins of elven halls with the fervor of a man who knows it will all be gone in a year.
  74. Taako doesn’t remember a lot of the year with broken space and time, but when he reforms the way Magnus grins at him and the teasing he gets for trying to kiss the man makes him think that the vague, hazy memories of some version of him with far too much glitter and not enough tact trying to make out and the ensuing slam dunk into his quiet room on the starblaster are, in fact, memory and not some weird fever dreams.
  75. They see the light fall away from this planet and Taako scrambles for something to say other than “well this one is doomed”. What comes out isn’t much better but he tried.
  76. The gods don’t answer on this plane even though there are plenty of people who follow them. Taako spends his year studying what healing spells he _can_ learn if only to keep his family safe. If he practices them on the people living there than it isn’t because he cares about them. _He doesn’t care about them_.
  77. Taako can breathe the air on this world but he is there when they find out the hard way that Barry, and the other humans, can’t. Lucretia’s room is fort human and Merle loses a lot of weed to keeping them from going stir crazy. 
  78. Taako can’t breathe when he looks at the forest of mushrooms that claimed Magnus-no, not Magnus this time, and not from poison either. Taako spends a lot of time in the kitchen with his old, homemade cookbook-turned-spellbook and the crew eats something different for every meal. Magnus is the only one who can get him to go to sleep and Lup wonders gently when their two person family grew to such a large size.
  79. Lucretia stays on the ship with Taako while the rest of the crew goes to fight a war that isn’t their own. Taako didn’t volunteer to stay behind, but he is glad he did. It is easier to say he doesn’t care that people are dying when he doesn’t know the people who are dying.
  80. Taako lays on his back with his arm pressed against Lucretia’s and so many thoughts in his head that it takes all his strength to focus on a single one. _You won’t be last ever again,_ he tells her. The sunlight filtering through the leaves of the flowers climbing over her window makes the world around them a soft green that is only peppered gently with the natural yellow of the sunlight on this plane. Taako traces the outline of the strange blooms with his outstretched finger absentmindedly as he tries to force his brain to work with him. _You won’t be last, and I won’t cook alone. Deal?_ Taako knows an empty promise when he hears one, and that is exactly what they are making right now. It is an empty promise born of desperation and sadness and the deep, aching _need_ they both feel in echoing in their chests that makes them want assurance that they will never have to be scared again. _Deal._ He knows that Lucretia knows as well, but they shake on it all the same.
  81. When Lup flicker out this year Lucretia is always ready to take up her place in the kitchen, and when Barry flies the ship away from the hunger Taako is there to clutch Lucretia’s hand until silver ribbons unravel them so they all come home. 
  82. Taako loves his sister. He loves her more than life itself. _Lup is his heart_ , and there is nothing that could ever happen to change that. Despite that, when she tells him what she and Barry are planning, he hides his terror from everyone but Lucretia and the _tap-tap-tap_ of his fingers on the wall between their bedrooms.
  83. Somehow, somewhere between becoming liches and dying as a lich for the first time, no one thought to tell the rest of the crew that Barry and Lup were functionally immortal. For some reason, that doesn’t surprise Taako as much as it should.
  84. Taako thinks Barry should be forced to wear a badge that proclaims that he is in “self care jail” and despite how bad the past few years have been, everyone ends up tangled up in the petty squabbles between the two brothers. It is refreshing, in more ways than one, when they continue even after he dies. 
  85. When Barry pulls out his _genuine human bone wand_ and starts using it to cast spells, Taako decides it is time to hang out with Lup and Davenport. The list shortens to just Davenport when Lup reveals she has a matching one made of _elf bones_.
  86. Taako, still riding the high of having immortal family members, comes crashing back to earth _hard_ when Lup and barry get magically sick because the plane of magic is eating itself and it’s magical creatures.
  87. Taako is the one who comes up with the system for measuring time on this plane where day and night don’t exist and time is hard to keep track of. What no one knows is that Taako has been using this system since he was little, it just adjusted to fit five additional heartbeats when the others first learned to use them as units.
  88. Taako would rather spend his time in the darkness of the last cycle than the perpetual daytime of this one, but this is the second cycle in a row where they all use his units of time and that helps him transition. 
  89. Taako loses it when Barry dies in the lab for the third year in a row and Lup has to take him planetside for a week to help him calm down. When he is finally ready to go back, Lup asks him why he was so upset. Taako won’t meet her eyes as he kicks the dust on the planet’s surface while they wait for the Starblaster to land and all he manages to say, after a long moment of silence, “ _he’s not dust, you know?_ ”
  90. Taako forgets, in a moment of giddy excitement fueled by the thought of someone beautiful that he doesn’t have to care about to help him pass the time, that mermaids are probably dangerous. His last thought this cycle is that Lucretia died this way first so she can’t tease him when he reforms.
  91. Taako comes back laughing about Lucretia’s own foray into the arms of deadly mermaids and so they start the year pretending that things will go back to how they were then. They end the year with Davenport pulling off some near impossible piloting stunts and everyone pretends, again, that times are still simple and he is still doing those because he can.
  92. Taako learns to mold enchantments and weapons and artifacts with his own two hands and finds something therapeutic about making a weapon out of the things he has learned over the journey. He thinks that there is something finite about the way it feels in his hand and there is a disconnect between that and their plan to trick the hunger. His Krabstar feels finite, feels like something meant to carry him to the end. This plan? This plan feels wrong, but it feels better than Lucretia’s plan.
  93. Everyone else doesn’t quite care what kind of world they end up in, but Taako realizes with some twisted sadness and relief that he would rather get a say in where he calls “ _home_ ” when then hunger shows up before they get the light. 
  94. Taako likes this world, thinks he could live here, could learn to see the people as people, but the light shows up long after the hunger finds them and Taako swallows his disappointment as gracefully as he can.
  95. When barry disappears, Taako panics and tells everyone he can’t read the notes on how to split the light. He knows how to do it, and he wants to, but he cannot bring himself to leave his family behind. When Barry shows up months later and blames himself, Taako tells him what happened in the dead of night in the language of the mongoose family from their first world. Barry still blames himself and Taako gets offered a free pass on guilt, but he cannot take it because they leave this world to be ravaged by the hunger because Taako was weak and nothing anyone says to him will change that.
  96. In an effort to pretend that they aren’t leaving another world to die because they cannot find the light, they all pretend to design relics out of trash that is lying around the starblaster. Taako’s favorite if the ripped rubber chicken Barry picks up and says will be the relic of Necromancy, but in the end Lucretia finds a ripped pool noodle in a corner of the ship no one has used in over fifty years and her’s is proclaimed winner. It is a hollow victory.
  97. Taako hears Merle ask to be killed one more time so he can die sixty nine times total and he _knows_ for a fact that Merle miscounted, but he laughs anyway. He tries to hold onto that laugh as Davenport flies the ship out with Barry and Lup firing spells from the deck for protection and the rest fo the crew works to keep enemies on the ground from moving off the ground. They all go down except Davenport and Taako takes his last breath as white light unravels his exhausted body and he prays that the next cycle will be the last.
  98. Taako reforms with something whispering in the back of his mind that _you are so close now,_ and he shakes it out of his head as they all set out to wait for the light. They wait, and wait, and wait, and then they catch it just a moment too late but as he watches Lup and Barry split and play with the light anyway he hears the voice in the back of his mind again. _You are so close, you can make it home soon, i promise_. 
  99. When Lup looks out on the world with wide, teary eyes and whispers, “ _Eska,_ ” Taako cannot help but smile with her. On this, their hundredth world, they have found home, and now all that is left is to figure out if he can learn to think of them as more than dust. 



 

( _ Taako has been alone all his life _ )

There is a new past in his head where

Universes are made of a fine dust that

Manifests in the people all around him

And convinces him he is broken.

Memory proves he was never broken.

( _ He doesn’t have to stay that way) _

**Author's Note:**

> soooooo... i did a second one to my lucretia stolen century study, only this time it is taako. I go a little more in depth about a few of the cycles and i am pretty sure his death count is two or three higher than in cannon but my defense on those is that some of his deaths ended up on planes too far from Faerun. 
> 
> also, idk if im going to more of these, but i know a few people on the tfw discord were inspired by the format and idea behind these, so i will update with links to theirs when/if they post theirs!
> 
> i might end up writing out *actual stories* (and by that i mean oneshots lmao) for the years with taako and lucretia. Im in love with the century i have created and like, i don't want to *stop* playing in this space, but this is the end product of this project for now.


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